Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hi.
I really need some information about Gekko Petricolus, aka Laos gecko, Sand gecko, yellowbacked gecko.

I wonder if anyone knows anything about petricolus and if anyone have a caresheet, or knows a website with some info. I've searched the web but I can't find any info on them, I just found some pictures and how big they get. Nothing about diet, temperatures and so on.

Thank you for your help!

Best regards
Sofia

This diurnal AND nocturnal gecko has speciel needs which differ from those of another frequently kept species of the genus.
They are rock dwellers (see name!) which need a only moderately moist rock setup in their tank with lots of preferably horizontal crevices to hide in and a basking spot!
Females are much less brightly coloured than males. But sadly females are almost unavailable in the pet trade and to make it more difficult inferior and juvenile males do mimic females.
If you are lucky enough to get females, be careful with Ca supplementation, since this species very rapidly develops pathologically oversized calcium depots at their cheeks.
Eggs are glued once a month throughout the year (with 1 or 2 2-3 months resting periods) onto rock surfaces.
Females can be quite dominant, so that its recommendable to only keep pairs.
If you keep two or more of these geckos, one will always be a brightly coloured male and the others will look like dull coloured females.
If you seperate them, in most cases you will see that all the "females" change to brightly coloured males.
Its hard to find females. hemipenis bulges are small in younger males-so don´t care about colour and bulges but lok for calcium cheeks when you search the pet rrasde for females.
If you manage to get females, breeding is as easy as for the other Gekko species

Hope that helps

Ingo

Thank you very much Ingo! Interesting information. I got him today and I think it is a male, I haven't looked at him very closely yet, but if he is, I will try to find a female.

Do you know any book or website with more information?

Thank you!

Best regards
Sofia

No sorry, there is not much out there. With respect to care I only know of two papers-in German.
I have just started to write a small book on captive care of species from the genus Gekko-but that will be in german as well and still will take some time.

Sorry

Ingo

Here's two pictures of my petricolus gecko.

Yes, its a male.
But its coloration seems to be relatively strange-maybe he is just in bad mood on the pic, butmaybe he is sth special.
But could you maybe provide me with a dorsal shot of him?
If this is his normal colouration, I would be very interested in colour slides or prints of him to use for my book.
Would this be possible?
Do you know, where exactly the import came from?

Best regards

Ingo

Hi Ingo
He looks a bit more orange on the picture than he does in real life I think the flash made him look more orange. I will try to get more pictures of him later today and post them here. Please tell me what you think about them later.

He has hemipenial bulges but no preanal pores. Does that mean that he isn't sexually mature yet or is it normal?

You said you knew about two pages about petricolus in German? My boyfriend knows a bit German, could you please give me the link or e-mail the info to me? That would be a great help. Thank you!

Here's some more pictures I took just now, without the flash this time. As you can see he isn't orange, but lemon yellow.